What Negotiations Are For

COMMON MARKETS

On cricket bats, polo sticks and tea, Britain and the European Common Market reached full accord last week. Such essential adjuncts to the British way of life will continue to be imported duty-free from India and Ceylon if Britain joins the Market. Despite such progress, the protracted negotiations for British admission came close to foundering over the pivotal issue of food prices.

From the start, Britain has insisted that it cannot join the European community without trade protection for Commonwealth food producers, chiefly New Zealand and Australia, whose grain, meat and dairy exports compete directly with European farm products. Britain is asking Europe's Six to limit their own, costlier food production by keeping farm prices low. However, the Common Market nations would promise nothing more specific than "reasonable" prices, while Britain demands hard and fast guarantees on an issue so vital to the future of the Commonwealth.

At week's end, Britain's chief negotiator, Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath, was about the only member of his team who seemed unruffled by the setback. "This is what negotiations are for," he shrugged. "We have been expecting difficulties to arise, and they have." But in a final 22-hour session aimed at breaking the stalemate, Heath's team failed to win the clear-cut safeguards it sought. With no hope of obtaining an overall accord in time for the Commonwealth conference in London next month, Britain and the Six adjourned the talks, agreed to try again in October.

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